You know how much I love my morning cup of coffee. The first few days of this infection I really missed it and went through my mornings with a steady headache.
But after that, the headaches went away and I kind of stopped missing it. Plus I slept better.
I started doing a little online research about caffeine in general. And I found out there are a lot of health problems caused by caffeine that I was not aware of.
I won't list them all here. You can go online and Google them if you're interested.
For one thing, caffeine is a stimulant. It can make you irritable, restless, increase your heart rate and blood pressure. I have high blood pressure and take medication for it. Maybe cutting out caffeine would help with that.
I also take medication for acid reflux, and caffeine can produce heartburn. So that is another thought.
Drinking coffee can stimulate something called peristalsis, which is the process in the digestive tract that makes us head for the bathroom after we drink coffee.
Which may seem like a good thing if you have a problem with constipation. But there's a bigger problem.
By stimulating peristalsis, coffee seems to promote increased gastric emptying and thus the stomach's contents are quickly passed into the small intestines. Unfortunately often before the digesting food has been broken down.
In this partially digested state, it makes it a lot more difficult for us to absorb the nutrients from the food we eat. This also happens with decaf, so obviously there are other components besides caffeine to this problem.
So I'm going to try a no-caffeine experiment. At least for awhile. Which means coffee, tea and chocolate. I need to cut down on sugar anyway.
I'm going to take it a day at a time and just see what happens.
Thoughts? Experiences? Suggestions? Do you skip caffeine?
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